P*rn is no one religion

In today's Sydney Morning Herald (May 26, 2007) there is an item on the growing numbers of women choosing to visit adult sites such as adult dating and porn sites. Right underneath it, on the home page is a screeching polemical by Adele Horin on how porn is “poisoning couples and destroying families”.

As much as I would like to avoid discussing the most “personal” areas of our sex life (partly because of the icky prospect of our families stumbling across this blog one day and reading it), I'm going to have to refer to it in some capacity in order to point out just what bunk Ms Horin has spewed up this week. I'll keep it as tidy as possible, but for anyone who's not interested in knowing our porn habits, please don't read any further ...

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Just a mouse-click away are images that exceed the bounds of fantasy or imagination.

Only for those who lack imagination, Adele! As for the bounds of fantasy, in my experience, fantasies are something for which there is a boundless range. Whose fantasy is Adele referring to? Mine? Gam's? Yours? No matter how totally bizarre something you think of may be, it's pretty safe to bet that there's already a porn site or forum catering to the people who get off on it. As I found out when I went searching for a picture of a hairy armpit to use on one of my posts- most of the images that appeared in my browser were from hairy armpit erotica sites!

The godfather of US sex addiction research, Patrick Carnes, the author of “In the Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behaviour”, claims 3 to 6 per cent of people are sex addicts.

“Dr” Patrick Carnes, PhD, according to his website "graduated in 1966 from St John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He received his Master’s degree in 1969 from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a PhD in counsellor education and organisational development from the University of Minnesota in 1980."

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Thought so. Another one of these self-styled “experts” from the United States, whose chosen field has nothing to do with the degree they received their doctorate in, yet they use the “Dr” title to lend them an aura of credibility. In other words, they make shit up and people like Adele Horin lean on their every word.

That figure of 3-6 per cent does not arise from any kind of valid body of scientific literature. “Dr” Carnes simply pulled it out of his arse, and Adele Horin was happy to publish it because it came from “the godfather” of the anti-porn crusader movement sex addiction “research”. Horin publishes a token acknowledgement on the next page that such figures are completely unscientific, but lack of a sound scientific basis didn't prevent her from spreading them in the first place.

What seems undeniable is that a subset of people spends so much time porn gazing online that they are damaging their relationships.